“Imagine you were now dead, or had not lived before this moment. Now view the rest of your life as a bonus, and live it as nature directs.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 66)
“I’ve realized that for some reason, God placed the most beautiful things in life on the other side of our worst terrors. If we are not willing to stand in the face of the things that most deeply unnerve us, and then step across the invisible line into the land of dread, then we won’t get to experience the best that life has to offer.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 406)
“This relationship is our classroom—we are learning to cultivate care, concern, and compassion in the most intimate and difficult of circumstances. There are few things in life more challenging than being married. The intimacy tends to stir up and expose our most poisonous inner energies. If we can learn to love here, we can love anywhere.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 404)
“Look back over the past—all those many changes of dynasties. And you can foresee the future too: it will be completely alike, incapable of deviating from the rhythm of the present. So for the study of human life forty years are as good as ten thousand: what more will you see?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 65)
“Top performers get back on track faster than most. This is the skill to develop. You will be interrupted, but you can choose to keep it brief.”
James Clear, Blog
“On death. Either dispersal, if we are atoms: or, if we are a unity, extinction or a change of home.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 63)
“Do not dream of possession of what you do not have: rather reflect on the greatest blessings in what you do have, and on their account remind yourself how much they would have been missed if they were not there. But at the same time you must be careful not to let your pleasure in them habituate you to dependency, to avoid distress if they are sometimes absent.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 62)
“Everyone is struggling. Everyone is having a hard time. Life can be brutal, chaotic, confusing, and excruciating. Our hearts are starving. Loving, giving, helping, serving, protecting, nourishing, empowering, and forgiving are the secrets of ‘the Smile.’ Can you imagine what it would feel like if someone loved you, gave you all you needed, helped you, served you, protected you, nourished you, empowered you, and forgave you?”
Will Smith, Will (Page 403)
“The physics of love and happiness are counterintuitive. As long as we are stuck in the need to receive—in the cycle of grasping and clinging and demanding that people and the world around us meet our needs—we will be locked into disappointment, anger, and misery. The sweet paradox is being fulfilled by giving, that your output precipitates the input—giving and receiving become simultaneous. To love and to be loved is the highest human reward and ecstasy. Allowing the best within you to serve and unleash the best within others is the most intense of human pleasures.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 402)
“Soon you will have forgotten all things: soon all things will have forgotten you.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 61)
“There is nothing that you can receive from the material world that will create inner peace or fulfillment. The truth is, ‘the Smile’ is generated through output. It’s not something you get, it’s something you cultivate through giving. In the end, it will not matter one single bit how well they loved you—you will only gain ‘the Smile’ based on how well you loved them.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 402)
“In his final days, Daddio wasn’t worried about ACRAC. He wasn’t worried about money; he didn’t even care about food anymore. He had a single burning question about his ending: Was my life useful? Daddio needed to know that our lives were better because he was here. He wanted to be reassured that in spite of all of his shortcomings and fumbles and mistakes, that in the net analysis his assets outweighed his liabilities, and his life had been valuable.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 401)
“How many who once rose to fame are now consigned to oblivion: and how many who sang their fame are long disappeared.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 59)
“Every goodbye was complete and perfect because we were saying goodbye with the full knowledge that this might be our last. Every laugh, every story takes on weight and meaning in that simple fact. Death has a way of transforming the mundane into the magical.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 399)
“I had always seen the world as my battlefield; I now understood that the true combat zone was my mind.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 394)
“What does not benefit the hive does not benefit the bee either.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Page 57)
“A library is a good place to soften solitude. A place where you feel part of a conversation that has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years even when you’re all alone. The library is a whispering post. You don’t need to take a book off the shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believed that if he or she spoke, someone would listen.”
Susan Orlean
“Stopping was equally as powerful as going; resting was equally as powerful as training; silence was equally as powerful as talking. Letting go was equally as powerful as grasping. ‘Surrender’ to me no longer meant defeat—it was now an equally powerful tool of manifestation. Losing could be equal to winning in terms of my growth and development.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 387)
“‘Surrender’ had always been a negative word for me—it meant losing or failing or giving up. But my burgeoning relationship with the ocean was exposing that my sense of control was actually an illusion. Surrender transformed from a weakness word to an infinite power concept. I had had a bias toward action—thrusting, pushing, striving, struggling, doing—and I began to realize that their opposites were equally as powerful—inaction, receptiveness, acceptance, non-resistance, being.”
Will Smith, Will (Page 387)